Background: In the late 1940s, Walter Cronkite was called to watch a broadcast of John Cameron Swazye doing his first evening TV newscast, sponsored by Camel cigarettes, on rival NBC network. When the show was over, Cronkite said, "We'll have to make it a half-hour, at least, instead of the fifteen minutes Swazye did." When asked to explain why, he replied, "With all the investment we will need to make in multiple cameras, sets, added people and so on, we'll need a lot of footage for the viewers to look at, not just a guy reading the news and still pictures. If we have just still pictures, people will be just as well off reading the newspaper the next day or merely continuing to hear the news on radio."
Statistic: in 45% of local TV news stories, a shot of an emergency vehicle would not seem out of place.
With the legendry Cronkrute conversation of an actual event and the statistic in mind, I watched the early evening news recently. It was a half-hour of (major network) world news followed by a half-hour of local news. This was a fair test - I didn't go for "Low-hanging fruit" by selecting the FOX network.
Here's a summary:
International / National news
34 seconds (0:34) of ads/promo :34 - 1:22 Intro
1:22 Bush / Iraq report
4:21 Civilian (US) life in Iraq
5:30 Iraqi civilians life in Iraq
7:10 China "kills" space satellite and effect on our defense
9:50 Storm in Europe (dramatic photos)
11:46 "Up next"promo
12:12 Ads
14:12 Law-ignoring "Debt collectors" story
17:00 Promo
17:15 Ads
19:42 Promo
20:00 US Congressman goes to jail
20:29 Global Warming Effects of shorter ski season on local communities
22:30 Promos & ads
25:50 Small-town, day-a-week MD - heartwarming
28:50 Promo / intro (Approximately 24 minutes of what they think is "news")
Local News
29:21 Condo fire and aftermath - dramatic films
35:00 Auto crash case
35:30 Profile (of significant person - I don't remember who)
36:32 "Unknown" gun shots report.
36:51 Oregon: fight snowball to knife (?)
37:18 Police pay problem in San Diego
37:35 promo & upcoming items
38:00 Ads
40:40 Possible upcoming LA Olympic bid
41:20 Navy article, new boats, computers
42:30 Promo, Up-next, PSA & ads
45:24 County auction
47:30 Weather
50:45 Crop failure story
51:10 Promo, ads and up-next
54:37 Sports
57:40 Mystery gifts on Edgar A. Poe grave
58:06 Farewells, promos and ads
60:00 end
The next day, I spent sixty minutes looking at my local newspaper, skipping uninteresting ads and getting all the info I wanted from over thirty different articles, leaving many times as many uninteresting (to me) ones unread. I also read about thirty of the forty plus comic strips and cartoons. I did skip the sports for this report.
Also, I can listen to the news in my car. I can get the7/24 news sation in LA here in SD. I'll watch the TV news when I'm stuck in the room with someone else looking. Another option; Record the dame thing and look at only what interests you - like reading the newspaper.
Off the soapbox, Karl
Karl